Town in Nottinghamshire, England
Worksop
A grocer's house frozen in the 1920s, liquorice fields and a gatehouse that has outlasted 700 years: that's Worksop.
Key information
- County
- Nottinghamshire
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 42,000 (2011 Census)
- Known for
- Gateway to the Dukeries, Worksop Priory, Mr Straw's House, liquorice growing
- Famous people
- Lee Westwood, William de Lovetot, Nathaniel Woodard
- Football clubs
- Worksop Town (the Tigers)
About Worksop
The house that stopped in 1923
Ask anyone who knows Worksop for one oddity and they will probably say Mr Straw's House. The Straw family ran a grocery and seed business in the town, and in 1923 they moved into a tidy Edwardian house on Blyth Grove. Then, in effect, they never moved on. The brothers William and Walter kept the place much as it had been for decades, resisting modernisation room by room. Walter died in 1976, and William, the last surviving brother, died in 1990 and bequeathed the house to the National Trust. It now gives visitors a rare glimpse of ordinary family life frozen in time. It is a very Worksop sort of treasure: unshowy, a bit eccentric and entirely real.
A priory founded in 1103
Worksop's great landmark is the Priory Church of St Mary and St Cuthbert. It was founded in 1103 by William de Lovetot, a local lord, for Augustinian canons, and its twin-towered west front still dominates the old centre. Much of the priory was swept away at the Reformation, but the church survived as the town's parish church. Beside it stands the medieval gatehouse, a 14th-century survivor that has outlasted the monks who walked through it by almost five centuries. Worksop itself is older than the priory. It appears in the Domesday Book, and the settlement grew up where roads and river crossings met on the northern edge of Sherwood country.
Gateway to the Dukeries
Worksop's best-known nickname is the Gateway to the Dukeries. The name comes from a cluster of grand estates that once belonged to dukes: Welbeck, Clumber, Thoresby and Worksop Manor. The eccentric 5th Duke of Portland had a network of tunnels dug beneath Welbeck. Clumber Park, a short hop away, is famous for its enormous avenue of lime trees and for giving its name to the Clumber spaniel, a stocky, mild-mannered gundog. For a town of coal and canals, being the doorstep to all this parkland has given Worksop a surprisingly genteel edge.
Liquorice, canals and coal
Worksop was once liquorice country. The plant was grown here for centuries, and the town's name was tied to the sweet root long before anyone worried about sugar. The Chesterfield Canal, opened in 1777, carried goods through the town and out towards the Trent. It is now a quiet place for boats, walkers and anglers rather than cargo. In the 20th century coal took over. Collieries around Worksop drew in workers and shaped the housing, the pubs and the community. The pits are gone, but the sense of a hard-working town has stayed.
Tigers, tee shots and a college
Worksop Town Football Club, nicknamed the Tigers, dates its beginnings to 1861 and plays at Sandy Lane. Non-league football here has a loyal following and a long memory. The town's best-known sporting son is golfer Lee Westwood, born in Worksop in 1973, who rose to world number one and became a Ryder Cup regular. Worksop College, a boarding school, opened in 1895 as part of Nathaniel Woodard's network of Anglican schools, with its foundation stone laid in 1890. Woodard founded a string of schools across England, and this is one of them.